Jonathan Simons

Jonathan W. Simons is an American physician-scientist, medical oncologist, and leader in prostate cancer research. In August 2021, Simons was appointed the medical director and Chief Science Officer of the Marcus Foundation. Prior to joining the Marcus Foundation, he served a 14-year tenure as the President and chief executive officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Simons’ laboratories, partly funded by the Prostate Cancer Foundation, at Johns Hopkins University and Emory University made original contributions to understanding the molecular biology of prostate cancer metastasis and principles of “broken immune tolerance” via T cell based immunotherapy for prostate cancer. The Simons lab invented GM-CSF genetically engineered vaccines for prostate cancer in rodents and humans for these studies, and subsequently Simons’ clinical team took the biotechnology into the world’s first human gene therapy clinical trials for advanced prostate cancer at Johns Hopkins.

Early life and education Simons was raised in Ithaca, New York. He is the husband, son, and grandson of cancer survivors. Simons’ father, David M. Simons, a professor at Cornell University, was among the first thousand patients cured of relapsed Hodgkin’s Lymphoma as a part of participation in National Cancer Institute clinical trials. Simons is the grandson of M.L. Wilson, who served as the Under Secretary of Agriculture under President Franklin Roosevelt. A 1976 graduate of Ithaca High School, Simons graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in biochemistry in 1980. Before entering medical school, Simons had a concentration in the Shakespeare Canon as a Rotary International Postgraduate Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England; subsequently he had a Nuffield Foundation research scholarship in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge in 1981. Simons co-directed with Shuming Nie the National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology. From 2000 to 2006, Simons was a Distinguished Service Professor of Hematology and Oncology at the Emory University School of Medicine, and Professor of Materials Sciences Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

With Michael Milken, chairman of the board of FasterCures, Simons created the strategic plan and served as the interim chief science officer for the launch of the Melanoma Research Alliance. The Melanoma Research Alliance was founded by Debra and Leon Black in 2007.

In 2011, Simons was inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars. The society inducts former postdoctoral fellows, postdoctoral degree recipients, house staff and junior or visiting faculty who have served at least a year at Johns Hopkins and thereafter gained marked distinction elsewhere in their fields.

Simons received the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni Award in 2020 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Prostate Cancer Foundation Simons has led the expansion of PCF’s Research Awards globally to over 800 research awards in 22 countries including $590.0 million invested in peer-reviewed funding to 240 teams of scientists working on human genetics, molecular oncology, genomic medicines, molecular imaging, and "precision immunotherapy". In total, funding from the PCF Research Enterprise has propelled 14 FDA approvals in prostate cancer.

In 2016, as a part of Vice President Biden's Cancer Moonshot initiative, Simons announced a 5-year, Foundation-Government partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs for a precision oncology clinical research and care program for every US veteran with prostate cancer in the VA.

In 2020, Simons launched the Prostate Cancer Theranostics and Imaging Centre of Excellence (ProsTIC) at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia.